All posts tagged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it has confirmed for the first time that the No. 1 reactor at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant melted down during the devastating accident four years ago.

Tepco said Thursday that x-ray like images taken inside the reactor showed that nearly all of the nuclear fuel had melted down, and nothing could be seen where the fuel rods should be. Read More »

For the first time since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011, engineers working for Tokyo Electric Power could soon get their first view of nuclear fuel and debris around the melted-down reactors. Read More »

Japan is now confident it can process all 320,000 metric tons of highly contaminated water sitting at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant by the end of March 2015, the deadline designated in the plant’s decommissioning roadmap. Read More »

The head of Japan’s nuclear regulator said Tokyo Electric Power Co. needs to get its priorities straight when it comes to work to decommission the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and that it must place a greater emphasis on solving issues that carry bigger risks.

“The biggest risk is the trench water. Until that matter is addressed, it will be difficult to proceed with other decommissioning work,“ Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, said on Wednesday at his weekly news conference. “It appears that they are getting off track,” he told reporters. Read More »

Still trying to work out the bugs in its water processing system, the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has decided to adopt technology to reduce risks posed by a deadly radioactive isotope stewing in water stored in a thousand tanks at the site.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Monday that the new technology would remove radioactive strontium from the 400,000 metric tons of highly contaminated water. Kurion Inc., the provider of the technology, has already delivered the first set of equipment to the site for inspection and plans to ship the balance of equipment in the coming weeks, the company said in a statement. The California-based company said it expects the processing system, which can handle 300 tons of water a day, to be operational this summer. Read More »

While Japanese manga aimed at adults are notorious for often having dark, troubling subject matter, a more prosaic food-themed manga has stirred up quite a bit of controversy after one of its main characters was sickened following a visit to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The local government of Futaba, one of the towns near where the stricken real-life Fukushima Daiichi facility is located, lodged an official complaint with the manga’s publisher after the main character in the manga “Oishinbo” (a portmanteau of the Japanese word for delicious and the word for someone who loves to eat) was shown to be bleeding from his nose right after the trip. Read More »

The Japanese government is becoming impatient with a nuclear watchdog’s time-consuming reactor-safety check, as delaying restarts are increasing risks of higher electricity prices.

All of Japan’s nine utilities that have nuclear-power plants already have either raised or decided to raise electricity prices to pay the high fossil-fuel bills necessary to make up for the power-generation shortfall from the idled nuclear plants since the Fukushima accident in March 2011. Read More »

Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, says it aims to boost its corporate value through its new 10-year business plan so it will be able to ante up the estimated $100 billion needed to pay for damages incurred by the devastating 2011 accident. But it hasn’t yet disclosed how it aims to achieve its goal.

The plan, drawn up by Tepco and the government’s Nuclear Damage Liability Facilitation Fund, was submitted on Friday to industry minister Toshimitsu Motegi. An approval by Mr. Motegi could come as early as January, but neither Tepco nor the government are talking about what’s inside the plan to restore the once-high flying Tepco to financial health. Read More »

New health guidelines to individually monitor how much radiation people who have returned to their homes in Fukushima prefecture have been exposed to has stirred up a fierce debate, with civic groups and some local media calling the guidelines simply a way for the government to deflect responsibility for its slow progress in cleaning up the damaged environment. Read More »

Just a few weeks before a massive earthquake and tsunami hit the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March 2011, Jun Hori, then a reporter at national broadcaster NHK, was interviewing people in the prefecture about their plans to promote local food products, such as asparagus and trout, to the high-end market.

Once seen as one of Japan’s breadbaskets, after the nuclear disaster spread a large amount of radioactive materials into the largely rural prefecture’s woods and waters, Mr. Hori felt it was as though Fukushima had suddenly found itself one morning transformed into a repulsive, monstrous creature, hated and shunned by everyone, not unlike what happened to Gregor Samsa, the protagonist of Franz Kafka’s seminal novella “The Metamorphosis.” Read More »

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